Mastitis is an infection which affects individual cows in a milking herd or even individual teats of a specific cow. Mastitis affects the quality of the milk in a negative way and makes the milk unsuitable for human consumption. Mastistis can be detected by visual inspection, by conductivity measurements, by measuring the NAgase value, measuring the temperature of the milk, measuring the milk flow or the milk quantity from a specific teat. However, most of the above mentioned methods only give rough indications on mastitis. Specifically will conductivity measurements, which is very suitable for automation, only give rough indications.
It is not unlikely that one or more animals, in a herd of milking animals served by an automatic milking machine, may be infected by mastitis. If the milk from an infected animal is collected in the same container as the milk from all other animals substantial economical loss may be incured since the milk in the container would be ruined or at least be of substantial lower quality.
In automatic milking machines it is vital that the milking machine is automated to the greatest possible extent. For instance would a visual inspection of all milk in an automatic milking machine by an operator remove many of the benefits of the automated milking process.
EP 628 244 B1 discloses a method and an apparatus using a conductivity measurement for obtaining an indication of mastitis and diverting milk based on this indication.
WO 98/50577 discloses a cell counter for measuring the somatic cell count in milk as an reliable indication on mastitis.
There thus exists a need in the art to automatically detect mastitis and prohibit milk from infected cows from being collected together with other milk.